Alice Rose is a foundling, discovered on the Yorkshire moors above Haworth as a baby. Adopted but then later rejected again by a horrid step-mother, Alice struggles to find a place where she belongs. Only baking - the scent of cinnamon and citrus and the feel of butter and flour between her fingers - brings a comforting sense of home. So it seems natural that when she finally decides to return to Haworth, Alice turns to baking again, taking over a run-down little teashop and working to set up an afternoon tea emporium. Luckily she soon makes friends - including a Grecian god-like neighbour - who help her both set up home and try to solve the mystery of who she is.

Years ago Flora fled the quiet Scottish island where she grew up-- and she hasn't looked back. In bright, bustling London, she can be anonymous, ambitious...and hopelessly in love with her boss. But when fate brings Flora back to the island, she's suddenly swept once more into life with her brothers-- all strapping, loud, and seemingly incapable of basic housework-- and her father. Yet even amid the chaos of their reunion, Flora discovers a passion for cooking - and finds herself restoring a dusty little pink-fronted shop on the harbour: a café by the sea.

When it came to her elderly mother and father, Roz practiced denial, avoidance, and distraction. But after her elderly mother's encounter with a ladder, the tools that had served Roz well through her parents' seventies, eighties, and into their early nineties could no longer be deployed. The themes here are universal: adult children accepting a parental role; aging and unstable parents leaving a family home for an institution; dealing with uncomfortable physical intimacies; managing logistics; and hiring strangers to provide the most personal care.